Hello there, I'm looking at getting an oktava mic to use in combination with a MKH416 on a documentary project i'll be shooting soon... looking for reviews outside this site i've noticed most are coming from studio recording situations... instruments, you see?... question now: What's the main use you film guys give to this mics? Would they work well capturing ambient sound on small interiors in combination with a mixer? what about interviews?... I've read here that shotguns are not good indoors and yet all my previous interviews have been done with this kind of mics and in seriously small rooms... never a problem there... so, what's the deal? any help will be much appreciated...
another about Oktava
- Thread starter BXL
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MattinSTL
Sound Modulator
There are many small diagphram mics like the Oktava that are better known in the musical community for instruments. It just happens that some of those same mics cross over very well as dialog mics. The Oktava is one such example. I have both the hyper and regular cardioid caps for my Oktavas and I use both of them for dialog and for foley plus ambient. If you like the sound you get with a shotgun in an interview in a small room then I wouldn't try to talk you into making a change, but you might be surprised at what you were missing.
Audio gear lust is something that grows differently for different individuals... we have people on this board who will swear that whatever $60 mic they use sounds great. When one of those guys asks what's wrong with the mic they're using because it sounds great... how do you answer that? Sound is subjective... until you can do an A/B comparison it would be hard to convince you that there's a huge difference.
The guys who come in and explain that they're doing everything right but they still don't know how to get the hollywood sound are usually the ones that are easiest to convince about this stuff... you see, if you open a thread saying "I'm happy with this so why should I change it" then it's a loaded question right from the start. Seriously if you're happy with something then I wouldn't look for ways to be unsatisfied... and if you do an A/B comparison with most shotguns against something like the Oktava hyper indoors... you aren't going to be satisfied with that gun indoors anymore.
PS. I forgot to mention that a 416 is one of the very few shotguns which can do many interiors... you will find me saying this in threads that are years old. I used to have one of those guns and I was perplexed that a lot of people would say the Sanken CS3 was/is the only shotgun which can do interiors equally well to exteriors... now that I have experience with both of those shotguns I will tell you that in my opinion they are very close performers to one another... the Sanken CS3 is a smoother sounding gun, but I prefer the actual sound of the 416 over the Sanken. What they have in common is both exhibit an unusually small "tail" for a shotgun... with many guns you can point the gun away from you and speak into the tail where the XLR goes in... and if you record that you'll hear that there's a bass heavy pickup out the tail of the mic which is dramatically quieter then the front of the mic, but significantly louder then the area that's to the side (with maximum rejection being at 120 degrees from the front axis)... so anyway this tail is one of the factors which makes other guns fall flat indoors.
The other benefit of a 416 indoors is that it's not an overly sensitive mic... sensitive shotguns like the 4073a have such a strong front pickup that they collect every single reflection of the room... so that not only the speakers mouth, but about 10 echoes are making it into the mics pattern unless the room is very inert. So asking this question from the viewpoint of 416 ownership is kind of a curve, because a 416 can do many interiors very well. It's early... sorry that I glossed over that point earlier... the fact that we're talking about a 416 makes a big difference... check any of my old threads that mention 416 and you'll see that I came to this conclusion LONG ago... yes a 416 will do many interiors very well... but not all of them.
Audio gear lust is something that grows differently for different individuals... we have people on this board who will swear that whatever $60 mic they use sounds great. When one of those guys asks what's wrong with the mic they're using because it sounds great... how do you answer that? Sound is subjective... until you can do an A/B comparison it would be hard to convince you that there's a huge difference.
The guys who come in and explain that they're doing everything right but they still don't know how to get the hollywood sound are usually the ones that are easiest to convince about this stuff... you see, if you open a thread saying "I'm happy with this so why should I change it" then it's a loaded question right from the start. Seriously if you're happy with something then I wouldn't look for ways to be unsatisfied... and if you do an A/B comparison with most shotguns against something like the Oktava hyper indoors... you aren't going to be satisfied with that gun indoors anymore.
PS. I forgot to mention that a 416 is one of the very few shotguns which can do many interiors... you will find me saying this in threads that are years old. I used to have one of those guns and I was perplexed that a lot of people would say the Sanken CS3 was/is the only shotgun which can do interiors equally well to exteriors... now that I have experience with both of those shotguns I will tell you that in my opinion they are very close performers to one another... the Sanken CS3 is a smoother sounding gun, but I prefer the actual sound of the 416 over the Sanken. What they have in common is both exhibit an unusually small "tail" for a shotgun... with many guns you can point the gun away from you and speak into the tail where the XLR goes in... and if you record that you'll hear that there's a bass heavy pickup out the tail of the mic which is dramatically quieter then the front of the mic, but significantly louder then the area that's to the side (with maximum rejection being at 120 degrees from the front axis)... so anyway this tail is one of the factors which makes other guns fall flat indoors.
The other benefit of a 416 indoors is that it's not an overly sensitive mic... sensitive shotguns like the 4073a have such a strong front pickup that they collect every single reflection of the room... so that not only the speakers mouth, but about 10 echoes are making it into the mics pattern unless the room is very inert. So asking this question from the viewpoint of 416 ownership is kind of a curve, because a 416 can do many interiors very well. It's early... sorry that I glossed over that point earlier... the fact that we're talking about a 416 makes a big difference... check any of my old threads that mention 416 and you'll see that I came to this conclusion LONG ago... yes a 416 will do many interiors very well... but not all of them.
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